by Jen Cole
Are we ready, Fitani wondered, or are the programming skills of the Executives still superior? No, he was confident the pupils had surpassed the masters. We can prove our intelligence, he thought, but what of our courage? It had been hundreds of years since anyone had been prepared to risk their lives trying to crack the land surveillance software.
Fitani finally understood his task. This was what Mother Company had prepared him for. The ‘people’ skills she’d encouraged him to hone – the ability to inspire and organize – had been all for one great purpose. He was to rouse the employees and guide them in moving to the next level.
~~~~
CHAPTER 41
In her blonde wig, Jo shivered under the streetlamp. It was bitterly cold and her skin crawled in the filthy track pants and hoodie, but as her watch changed to 5.00 a.m. she smiled for the camera. She had a bolt-hole. At 5.01 she jogged down the dark block to Richard’s place, stripped off her gear and climbed into bed. Richard’s soft snores floated across from the sofa in the next room, and with a little sigh of regret at his gallantry, Jo fell back to sleep.
Now at 7.58, she was standing exactly where she’d been for the 5.00 a.m. posting, hoping the Hunter had placed his agents in a radius three hours away. This time the sun, not a streetlamp shone down and Jo watched her breath misting in the crisp morning air. Thirty seconds after eight o’clock, she turned and jogged towards the house. She was halfway back when the red Veloster coasted up beside her.
Richard peeled himself off the plastic bin-liner covering the driver’s seat and climbed out. He held the door open and Jo took his place, removing the encrusted hoodie and wig to transform from the waist up into a neat, auburn haired businesswoman, driving to work.
Richard rested his forearms on the opened window. “I’ve set the car’s navigation system to guide you to Marilyn’s place in Carlton, but if anything goes wrong, her address is on that piece of paper in the Melway.” He pointed to the Melbourne street directory on the passenger seat.
Jo smiled. “I’ll be fine. Gotta go. Not safe to hang around.”
It was a risk showing her face so close to where her coordinates had been broadcast twice in a row, but they needed Richard’s car.
He stood back. “See you in twenty minutes.”
Jo pulled out and drove down the quiet street to the main road. No one stopped her. She turned left and merged with the morning traffic. Soft winter sunlight streamed through the window and she marveled at her lightness of heart. Well, why shouldn’t I feel this way, she thought. I’ve reached day three in good shape. I’m on my way to a new refuge at Marilyn’s apartment, and I’ve picked up a guardian angel… or is that a white knight? Jo felt the corners of her mouth lifting at the clichés. With Richard helping, could the impossible become possible? Could she bring her father’s murderers to justice and survive the game?
She drifted into a daydream about possibilities with Richard that were unconnected to either. A red light brought the traffic to a halt and the navigation system told her to turn right at the next street. She flipped on the radio, discovering the news broadcast was over, but some up-beat music was playing and she let it carry her along.
…
At the house, Richard collected the belongings they’d brought in the night before, even remembering to retrieve the laptops they’d left charging in the kitchen. Amazing what a few good hours of sleep could do to revitalize the brain cells. He piled their gear into the boot of his dark silver Camry, and added some extra items before leaving. Now as he crawled along with the traffic, Richard reviewed the plan he’d worked out the night before. It wasn’t a great one, but it gave them a chance to put the Hunter on ice, so it was worth a try. He hoped the team working on Brooks and Blatman had been making progress. He’d check his email when he got to Marilyn’s.
…
Jo turned into the steep driveway leading to the parking under Marilyn’s building, and pulled into the space marked ‘54’. She grabbed the wig and greasy hoodie from the floor and retrieved her bike bag and helmet from the boot. The pannier pack was at Richard’s and she hoped he’d remember to bring it.
Richard had told her Marilyn rented the luxury fifth floor apartment cheaply from a rich grandmother, but if he hadn’t said Marilyn lived alone, Jo would have assumed she had a roommate. A pale granite-topped island bench with bar stools separated a modern kitchen from the dining/living area and it was there the furnishings deviated sharply from what she’d been expecting.
Cheap student bookshelves – planks laid between cinder blocks, were set up against a wall. A saggy, second-hand couch sat in front of a small television set, and there was no dining table.
Jo crossed to the shelves. Plenty of law books, along with some fiction – mainly Russian writers like Dostoevsky, Chekov and Tolstoy. She’d expected political titles – Marilyn had told her she was involved in politics, but the ones on these shelves all had communist or socialist themes, which didn’t fit what Jo imagined Marilyn’s views to be. Across the room, near the French windows, a new red leather settee with matching armchairs, circled an elegant coffee table. Now that’s a Marilyn setting, Jo thought.
She stepped out through the French windows onto the balcony and drank in the green park below. A woman with a baby in a pram strolled along one of the paths, calling in a half-hearted way to the toddler racing ahead, to come back to mummy. Jo sighed. How wonderful not to have a care in the world.
The doorbell snapped her back to reality and she opened to Richard carrying her pannier pack in one hand and the pants and boots from Marilyn’s outfit in the other.
“You made it alright then,” he smiled.
She returned his grin. “No problem.”
“I have an idea for the 11.00 a.m. broadcast. You’ll need to wear last night’s roadblock outfit under the track pants and hoodie.”
“Let me wash this gunk out of my hair before I do anything else. It marks things I brush against and every time I move my head I get a whiff of stale coffee.”
Richard laughed. “Go ahead and I’ll get breakfast started.”
Jo reached out to relieve him of the items and then leaned forward impulsively and kissed him. His eyes widened and he broke into a smile. She blushed and headed for the bathroom.
Twenty minutes later, a confident Jo emerged. A vigorous washing had taken out the stale coffee smell and left her hair with attractive coppery highlights. She’d added a touch of makeup from Marilyn’s supply, and now fully dressed in her roadblock outfit, felt fresh and sexy. Jo had also been delighted to discover that the bathroom held a compact washer/drier, and her track pants and hoodie were now undergoing a heavy-duty wash.
Delicious smells and the musical introduction of the news broadcast drew her to the kitchen. The newsreader’s opening story, reported in a tone of grave concern, was not of roadblocks or the police hunt for Kylie Marshall, but of a local football hero’s failure to convince the tribunal not to suspend him for three matches. This was followed by the announcement that a national poll had shown Australians now put global warming at number seven on their list of important issues, where it had fallen from first.
Richard laughed. “That’s what a long cold winter will do for you.”
“I wonder if any of the issues from one to six included overpopulation,” mused Jo.
“I think we both know the answer to that one,” he said. “Your future people are right in saying most of our world refuses to even consider that issue.”
“Well, right now all I’m considering is breakfast. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.”
“Just as well it’s ready then.”
He pulled out a bar stool at the granite bench and poured her an orange juice. As she drank, Richard opened the oven and extracted two warmed plates, which he put down at the places he’d set. Diving in again, he removed two more plates, both laden. One held a stack of pancakes and the other, fried tomatoes, eggs and rashers of bacon.
“Dig in.”
&n
bsp; Jo needed no second invitation. She helped herself to a couple of pancakes, buttered the top one and added a fried egg, some bacon and a tomato.
“This is wonderful,” she said around a mouthful.
Richard, who was making inroads into his own pancakes and eggs, nodded. “I didn’t realize how hungry being on the run makes you. Tea?”
“Lovely! I’ve gone right off coffee after smelling it in my hair all night.”
The teapot he picked up was delicate and appeared to be silver, but the mugs he poured into were large and colorful. Jo almost made a comment about how strangely contradictory Marilyn’s belongings were, but decided she didn’t want to bring Marilyn into the conversation. Instead she added milk from the jug Richard had put on the bench.
“I take my hat off to whoever trained you Rick.”
“I prefer Richard,” he said with a self-conscious smile. And I guess the thanks go to my mother, who showed me a few tricks while declaring that no son of hers would grow up to be helpless in the kitchen.”
“You have brothers?”
“Actually no, I’m an only child, like you.”
“You must be close to your parents.”
“I was.”
The reply was peremptory and he lowered his head to his food. Jo was bewildered. What did that mean? Had there been a falling out, or were his parents no longer alive? Obviously this wasn’t where he’d intended the conversation to go, but right now he seemed like a little boy lost, and her heart went out to him.
Tentatively she asked, “Do they live elsewhere?”
“My mother lives interstate with her new husband,” he replied shortly. “We’ve been out of contact for several years.”
“And your father?” her voice was soft.
Richard continued to eat his breakfast and at the point when Jo decided he wasn’t going to answer, said quietly into his plate, “There was an incident. It’s not something I like to talk about… have ever talked about, really.”
“Richard, I understand. I’ve also lost my father.” Her voice trembled a little on the last words and he looked up, the tightness in his face changing to concern.
“Jo, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to open the wound.”
“I wasn’t able to talk it over with my aunt,” said Jo. “I hardly know her and she never got on with Dad anyway. When I told her Dad’s death couldn’t have been an accident, she said I was deluded. My friends were much more sympathetic, but they obviously also believed the coroner.
“For the last few weeks I’ve just felt like raging. Dad and I were close, and his death was so unfair. Now I know that he was murdered I intend to make sure his killers don’t get away with it.”
She lifted her eyes to Richard’s. “Was the incident with your dad anything like that?”
Richard took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh, his shoulders slumping. “Yes and no. My Dad’s death was also unexpected and could be laid at the door of others, but they didn’t kill him directly. He took care of that himself.”
“Oh, Richard.” Jo began to reach out but he’d picked up the teapot and was pouring, his gaze fixed intently on the steaming liquid running into his mug.
“When I was a kid, Mum and Dad owned a wholesale plant nursery.” He spoke to the stream. “They had a handful of employees and grew all kinds of plants. It was only a small business but they loved being their own bosses, and felt they were creating something for me.”
He sipped from his mug, looking into the middle distance. “I’d sometimes travel with Dad in the truck when he went selling to the retail nurseries. Not so long ago there were dozens of little nurseries, and the owners would always come out and chat with us as they selected plants to buy. They all said Dad’s were the healthiest of all, which made me feel so proud.”
He looked at Jo and smiled. “Mum and Dad used to formulate their own special potting mixes for each variety they grew, and they were meticulous in cleaning up dead leaves and guarding against insect and fungal attacks. You can’t let those jobs get away from you in the nursery business. The retailers always bought something, and by the time we’d done the rounds, the truck would be empty and Dad would have a notepad full of orders for next time.
“In recent years though, things changed. Big supermarket-style nurseries began opening up and the little guys couldn’t compete. Some were absorbed, others closed down. For my parents, it became easier at first. The big nurseries had big orders, but only wanted one or two varieties. My folks ended up growing nothing but azaleas for a single company. I think a lot of the joy went out of the business for them after that.
“Then the squeeze began. The company took everything my parents could produce but began dropping the unit price they were prepared to pay. Mum and Dad gradually had to let their employees go and ended up laboring twelve hours a day to keep up with a demand that paid little more than the bills.”
He looked across to Jo and she nodded. “I know what you’re talking about. It’s the same thing in the orchard industry.”
Richard put his cup down. “I’d just finished school at the time and was heading off to university. They’d managed to keep from me just how desperate things were and even tried to help out with my fees. Then the company they’d been dealing with told them they’d just signed up a huge azalea wholesaler in New South Wales. This wholesaler had a vast automated setup and plants grow faster there too, because of the warmer climate. My parents were informed that as valued clients, the company would continue to buy from them if they could match the price of the NSW supplier. Turned out this was 30% less than their current price.
“Dad was in his mid forties, too late to start afresh. He and Mum had labored for twenty years in their nursery and had nothing to show for it. Mum went into the potting shed one day to find Dad hanging from a roof beam. Within a space of six months, she’d sold the nursery, married a barrister and moved to Sydney. It was as though that part of her life had never happened. All those years she and Dad had worked side-by-side had just been wiped from the slate.
“I couldn’t dismiss it all the way she had. I was angry with myself for not having realized how bad things had got, angry with Dad for having taken the easy way out and angry with Mum for getting on with her life. But most of all, I was angry at the multinational giants sweeping the Earth and destroying the lives of little people like us, people just trying to make a living from our own small businesses.”
“Richard, that’s so awful.”
“I felt as though I’d lost my whole life,” he admitted. “Overnight the nursery was gone and in their own ways each of my parents had left me. Now with some perspective I can understand their actions and not take them personally. They were only human after all, but I can never forgive the goliaths. In their quests to continually expand and spread their control, they don’t just destroy lives, they reduce everyone’s options.”
“But is there any stopping them?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but at least with vigilance and organized resistance we can slow them down.”
“Richard thank you for telling me this,” said Jo. “Now I understand the choices you’ve made, including why you’ve been prepared to help me. I realize how hard it must have been for you to talk about it.”
He smiled and squeezed her hand. An aching to draw him in overwhelmed Jo, and she tightened her hand on his. They moved together.
“Don’t mind me,” said a voice. “Go for the big smooch.”
For a split second their eyes remained locked, then each stepped back and turned to face Fitani.
“Ahh, how disappointing,” he responded.
“Business before pleasure,” said Richard with a tight smile.
“Well then,” Fitani bowed towards Jo. “What is your business?”
Jo appraised him thoughtfully. He wore a severely cut suit of a shiny rust-colored hue matching his hair. The Company logo stitched on the breast pocket was electric blue, along with the ruffled shirt beneath his jacket and the curled to
es on the ends of his shoes.
“I prefer this outfit to your last,” she said.
Surprisingly, Fitani didn’t preen, but merely nodded. He looked tired and Jo couldn’t help but remark, “Dear me, I haven’t been keeping you up have I?”
“Touché my dear. It’s true that few prey last this long. You’ve been running my crew quite ragged, but more people than ever before are watching the show. You and the Hunter are certainly giving everyone their Points’ worth. So, what would you like to ask me today?”
“As I was driving here this morning,” said Jo, “I started feeling for the first time, that I had a chance of surviving this game, and then I thought, what’s the point of getting through five days of Play or Die if the whole world ends on day six. So what I want to know is, how long from now until The Great Destruction occurs?”
Fitani looked at her solemnly. “You needn’t worry about day six … or day seven.”
Then he doubled over with laughter holding his knees. “Oh you should see your faces! Relax, I’m joshing you. From your point of view the Great Destruction won’t occur for another seventy-eight years.”
“You’re wasted as a game host,” Richard gritted. “You should be running your own comedy show.” He stiffened and grabbed Jo’s arm. “I know what’s been disturbing me about that guy’s outfits.”
Jo wrinkled her brow. “What do you mean? Is there anything not disturbing about his outfits?”
“True, but I was talking about the logo. Something about it has been niggling at me. Wait a minute.”
Richard opened his laptop on the bench and started it up, while Fitani wandered around the apartment, humming an annoying little tune and eyeing the furnishings.
“Here, check this out.”
Jo peered over his shoulder at an official looking document filling the screen.
“What is it?”